Best free Word Processor that's compatible with Microsoft Word?

Libreoffice http://www.libreoffice.org/

seems to be getting a lot of recommendations these days

Well, in terms of best, it might be argued the best would be MS Word for Mac (MS Office for Mac 2011) as it uses the same native format as the window's version of office.

Others that are compatible include Apple's own Pages - http://www.apple.com/apps/pages/

Then there are the free offerings, like openoffice - http://www.openoffice.org/ and others.

I do not honestly know if there is one single "best" as there are so many possible specific features and formating oddities in MS Word that it is impossible to say that any one otherwise generally MS-Word-compatible program is guaranteed to be 100% compatible with your specific documents.

Bean has received good reviews

LibreOffice, no two ways about it.

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

ThunderCon wrote:

hey guys, i'm looking at moving over to the Mac in a couple days and i just need to know the best free Word Processor that can open .doc files. 99% of my docs made in Word are of the 97-2003 variety and not 2007's .docx.

appreciate any help.

thanks

OpenOffice for sure. Bean is great, but there is no substitute for MS Office 2011 if you seriously want to work with old (and new) MS Office docs.

Good Luck

Pete

You can try Apache OpenOffice:

http://openoffice.org/

Or,

LibreOffice:

http://www.libreoffice.org/

I personally use OpenOffice.org and my experience with it has been great. I also heard good reviews for LibreOffice and since that project was a fork from OpenOffice I wouldn't be surprised that it does the job as well.

I like Bean as a fast way to read Office documents and to make simple ones. Its simplicity (its strength) doesn't make it a contender for a full Word equivalent, and of course it doens't have other office features (spreadsheets).

The OP specified the need for a "free" Word Processor for .doc files

(He could just use TextEdit for simple .doc files)

Pretty much the same.

Pete

Bean has some limitations: it doesn't do footnotes or use stylesheets and is only partially compatible with Word's file formats. Also, it allows in-line graphics, but not floating graphics.

From: http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html

But since 99% of the OPs doc's are Word 97-2003, Bean should be fine.

When I work with Windows user I prefer to use LibreOffice, I am not certain why but it apperas to me, that it do interpers the microsoft doucment formats than OpenOffice